Tuesday, September 20, 2005

More ref Trentadue case

"A Federal judge has upheld his original judgment of $1.1 million against the Federal government in the mysterious death of federal prison inmate Kenneth Trentadue in 1995 in Oklahoma City."

This, you may remember, is in the suits over the man who died in the El Reno facility; the government claimed he committed suicide, the family thinks- and evidence strongly suggests- he was beaten to death. One of the more eye-catching phrases from the judgement(article here), the judge says there was 'intentional infliction of emotional distress' and "The judge also found 'that the extreme and outrageous character of the defendant's conduct is important evidence that the distress existed'."

This just keeps getting worse as it goes along. So far we've got someone dead; government investigators and lawyers shown to have lied; and a continuing effort to cover up all of it. Last I heard on this, the judge is still waiting to hear if the FBI has some reason he should not be able to see the unredacted reports that were previously provided to Trentadue's brother. It'll be interesting to hear what reason the FBI has to say the judge isn't trustworthy enough to look upon them.

If they had admitted in the first place, or shortly thereafter, what really happened they'd have had to eat earlier words and prosecute the people responsible for this; they'd have had a bit of a black eye that would have been much healed by the fact that they cleaned their own house. Instead there's coverup and conspiracy and bullshit, and it makes them look worse and worse as time goes on. I really wish the various feds involved would actually live up to their oaths and claims and clean this mess up. The right way.

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